Real Money

Take Substance Over Bluster

A book about the lies people tell helps. The Donald's bombast doesn't.

Are investors better served reading bluster from Donald Trump or an examination of the lies we are told and tell ourselves? It is a seldom posed question and probably for good reason, but with sincerest apologies to the Donald, The Business Press Maven, who weighs in on business books every other weekend, is going to side firmly on the side of the lies.

Trump comes at the reader like two tons of literary bricks, starting from the lippy photograph of him on the cover, shouting and pointing an aggressive forefinger. Think Big and Kick Ass in Business and Life (Collins) is the title of Trump's book, written with Bill Zanker, creator of the Learning Annex, an innovative adult education business that has, it bears mentioning, thought big and kicked ass. But the book is what you expect from a man who gave the phrase "You're Fired" pop culture currency and handed out real live currency to those who waited at his book signing recently, a tack most starving authors might find a bit of a challenge. But when The Donald puts pen to paper, the sky is the limit. At least for the first few hundred who showed up in line.

For the rest? Well, whatever Trump has accomplished leveraging family connections, leverage itself and celebrity culture, an investor will garner little but self-destructive impulses from a shove-it-down your gullet worldview. It is worth mentioning, for those who look to books for business advice, that many who have achieved success long-term, specifically in the stock market, are quite, or at least relatively, modest folks, from Warren Buffett to the Allen family to a whole host of Goldman Sachs ( GS) giants.